


Thank You For Visiting Night Vale!

by thequeergiraffe



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, just some little vignettes, ratings are possibilities not definites
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeergiraffe/pseuds/thequeergiraffe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How old are you, anyway?” Carlos is looking at him expectantly.</p><p>“Well,” Cecil says, putting his hands on hips and cocking a little smirk at Carlos. “You know the saying: a gentleman never asks, and anyone hoping to avoid indefinite detention never tells.”</p><p>--</p><p>Slice-of-life stories from everyone's favorite desert town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On Being Born

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this first chapter a long time ago, well before Cassettes aired. I was surprised and pleased to find how well it fit in canon.

Cecil, like the majority of Night Vale denizens, doesn’t remember being a child. He suspects he must have been a child once (there are children in Night Vale, after all) but there are no sweet recollections of summers spent climbing trees, no fumbling memories of teenage romance, no fear of the dark and the space under the bed that wasn’t perfectly validated by adult experiences.

He remembers being born. Oh yes, he remembers that just fine. The terror, the bright lights and the cold air sucking at his blood-soaked skin, the screaming (so much screaming) and the toneless voice announcing echoingly, “THIS BEING IS ACCEPTABLE, IT WILL BE ALLOWED.” He remembers firm, gloved hands grasping him and pulling him from safety and warmth into a world full of darkness and fear and pain. In fact, this is one of the town-wide recurring nightmares sanctioned by the City Council, and perhaps, of the myriad of Council-sanctioned nightmares, Cecil’s favorite.

Carlos finds this, in his own words, “bizarre”.

“Where is your mother?” he asks, his smooth scientist’s hands wrapped around a mug in Cecil’s small kitchen.

“I…I’m not sure,” Cecil admits. In truth, the question has never come to mind. He must; he knows he was born. But to whom-- or what-- he was birthed, Cecil cannot say. A thought wanders into the endless void inside his mind: “The only woman in town old enough to be my mother would have to be Old Woman Josie.”

“Really?” Carlos taps his long fingers against the warm ceramic mug. “How old are you, anyway?”

Cecil considers. He thumbs through his earliest memories, his tongue wandering across his bottom lip. “I…” Hmm. He thinks, and thinks, and thinks. And then he realizes that he doesn’t remember a thing before moving into his small, neat apartment near the Community Radio Station. He doesn’t remember moving in; he doesn’t remember living anywhere else.

Carlos is looking at him expectantly.

“Well,” Cecil says, putting his hands on hips and cocking a little smirk at Carlos. “You know the saying: a gentleman never asks, and anyone hoping to avoid indefinite detention never tells.”

For a moment, Carlos seems to want to push the issue. Then his features settle into a smile, his eyes lighting up in a way that Cecil knows is only for him. “In that case,” he says, his tone teasing, “let’s talk about something else. What are you doing on your show tomorrow?”


	2. On the Difference between Love and Terror

The events of yesterday are still banging around in Cecil’s mind. A shudder wends down his spine as he remembers that day, the shouts of fear and agony, the blood, the dripping entrails hanging from every surface. He contemplates the faceless horrors that will almost certainly haunt his nightmares when they’re not provoking him to sleepless tossing and turning. Sweat pooling at his temples, he remembers the coiled heat of pure, animalistic terror in his guts, the smell of burning flesh in the air and the way the smoke stung at his eyes, the bite of the occasional spark striking his skin, and all of the dead, their blank eyes staring up towards the heavens, their mangled bodies lying in the street, leaking viscera and horrible, blackish fluid--

“What’re you smiling about?” Carlos asks suddenly, a matching smile in his voice.

Dreamily, Cecil looks up from his hands. “Oh,” he sighs, a soft sort of wistfulness in his voice, “nothing.”

A flush of color touches Carlos’ honey-gold skin and his perfect teeth reveal themselves all at once. Lines form by his eyes, yielding crinkles that Cecil dreams of almost constantly.

Cecil doesn’t know what he’s done to earn such a look, only that it warms him in a way that even the greatest and most terrible riot-fire could not. He reaches out, and lightly touches Carlos’ hand.


	3. On Breaking the Law

He clears his throat.

“Attention, citizens of Night Vale: the City Council asks me to remind you that the discussion of, or even mere mention of, geographical locations presumed to exist outside of Night Vale city limits is _strictly forbidden_. The City Council adds that it is very unlikely such exotic locales – including what some may call our ‘sister city’, or what I tend to think of as a disgusting, timorous abscess which was thankfully removed in our youth and yet still haunts our nightmares… _Desert Bluffs_ – even exist.

“Oh, I’m being handed something now by Intern Jackie…it appears to be an addendum to this news feature. The City Council adds – in angrily slashed capital letters – that because I implied the existence of such a place as ‘Desert Bluffs’ – here inscribed with what appear to be highly sarcastic quotation marks – I am to…ah. Hmm. I am to report to the Sheriff’s Secret Police _immediately_ for intensive re-education.

“Well, listeners, it’s a lucky thing I happen to have a friend here at the station with me! Carlos – beautiful Carlos, looking particularly resplendent in a freshly-bleached lab coat – will simply have to finish today’s broadcast. But, for now, the weather.”


End file.
